


Like an ocean takes the dirty sand

by kimabutch (CWoodP)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene, Self-Hatred, Stream of Consciousness, mentions of infection & quarantine, spoilers for RQG 155
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWoodP/pseuds/kimabutch
Summary: Zolf wants to leave, again.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	Like an ocean takes the dirty sand

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for RQG 155! Title is from Heal by Tom Odell. Thanks to Babs for beta-reading!

Zolf wants to leave.

Zolf wants to leave, and he hates that. He can’t, anyways. Can’t break quarantine. And he’s needed here, or… or something. So he takes Cel’s suggestion and storms up the stairs to his room in the inn.

Well, ‘his’ room. The one he was sleeping in before they left, at least. It’s got very little of him to mark it as his own: some books in the corner, some extra clothes. No point in luxuries in an apocalypse. No point in getting attached. 

Zolf slides the door forcefully behind him. Searches around aimlessly. Finds himself by the window. Looks out at the shore that borders the inn. 

The water is blue and clear and still and after all this time, it still looks like freedom. An escape from all this. A chance at something more than suffocating guilt, burying him deep in the earth. Zolf breathes in the salt air like he’s drowning.

He knows he can’t run to it. He has to stay. Shouldn’t even be going on the ocean with krakens and Poseidon and that lot. Shouldn’t feel like it’s home after everything.

It’s just — look, it’s just that it was easier before Hamid came back, right? Not _better_ , it’s not like he wasn’t relieved when he heard, but — what was it that Carter had said about letting him just be grumpy? Giving him a problem to solve? Well, maybe that is what he _fucking_ needs, to feel like he’s actually solving problems, even if the problem is just that maybe they’re infected and the solution is just sitting and waiting in the cell like they’re supposed to.

And now it’s all ruined anyways, and they don’t understand what that means, what it means for Japan and the world and — and him. But he can’t just explain to them that if the rules don’t work anymore, if they don’t matter or make sense, then he doesn’t, either. That if he can’t see a way that things might actually work out, a path to the future, then he can’t hope, and if he can’t hope —

This is how it happens every time. When things don’t make sense anymore, he runs. Leaves behind his parents or his crew or Hamid or _Sasha_ , because if the world doesn’t make sense then neither does he, and if he doesn’t then he can’t be with people who somehow still believe that it does. 

He wonders if they’d come after him if he left. 

Doesn’t know if he’d want them to. 

Doesn’t know if he’d want to know.

The room is small. Stifling. Worse than their cramped jail cell, somehow. The cell where he told them — still doesn’t feel real that he did. But they held that knowledge, kept it, and it was okay when they were all still there, but now, now it’s out, running free like the infection, and maybe that’s why he needs to go more than ever. Because now every time they look at him, he knows that they know, that they see it in him, the guilt he carries around. Their looks are as smothering as this room. 

Fuck. He can feel it now — that slipping, drifting, falling, until he’s not really in his body anymore. He closes his eyes. Tries to breathe.

Okay. He’s — he can smell. Smell and taste the salt air, fresh and free. The stale dust of the room. The smell of the kitchen still on his clothes. 

He can feel his hands and — how long have they been balled into fists? He unclenches them. Right. Okay. He can feel his clothes. The breeze. The floor. His gradually steadying breath into his beard.

He can hear the waves outside. Movement downstairs. Kobolds. Gods, he can’t even begin to know how he feels about that. It’s not what any of them need right now. Not him, not Hamid, definitely not the _bloody_ kobolds. No. No, okay. He can hear. He can hear some villagers talking in Japanese outside the inn. 

He opens his eyes. He can see the water. A fishing boat, probably out for the first time in months. The stony shore. 

Zolf breathes deeply.

He wants to leave.

He doesn’t.


End file.
